The lawsuit was filed in the Los Angeles federal court, where Hasbro was seeking damages as well as a temporary injunction to stop ASUS from selling its Transformer Prime tablet.

The situation seemed a bit odd, since both products are so different. Hasbro's leader of the Autobots, Transformers' Optimus Prime, is a transforming robot from the planet Cybertron that constantly fights other transforming robots called Decepticons. Then you have ASUS' Transformer Prime, which is a 10-inch tablet that features a NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor, 8 MP rear camera, 1.2 MP front-facing camera and the Android mobile operating system for $499 (32 GB) and $599 (64 GB). One could hardly confuse the two.

Apparently the judge in the U.S. federal court felt the same way. The court ruled that ASUS could sell its Transformer Prime tablet because there was nothing "gimmicky" about the Eee Pad Transformer or Transformer Prime that would cause anyone to confuse the two products. The decision was solidified when the court realized that ASUS had named its tablet appropriately, since the tablet can transform into a laptop computer. Furthermore, the court said Hasbro waited too long to file the lawsuit and was not entitled to a preliminary injunction despite its planned launch of the Transformer Prime line this month.

"In sum, Hasbro has not demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits of its infringement and dilution claims," said the judge. "Even assuming "serious questions" going to the merits are raised, the present record fails to evidence a likelihood of irreparable injury or that the balance of the equities tips sharply in Hasbro's favor. Having waited until the purportedly infringing and diluting tablets had been on the market for almost a year, the Court sees no grounds for invoking the extraordinary and drastic remedy of preliminary relief that would reverse the status quo ante before the parties have had the opportunity to try the case on its merits. The motion is DENIED."

Hasbro, of course, disagreed with the ruling.

"Hasbro strongly disagrees with the Court’s decision not to preliminarily enjoin ASUS’ use of those marks, however we were pleased with the Court’s views on the strength of Hasbro’s TRANSFORMERS and TRANSFORMERS PRIME marks," said Hasbro. "While the case proceeds toward trial, Hasbro will continue to actively pursue this matter and will take all steps necessary to protect its globally recognized and established marks.”

One is a highly evolved inorganic life form with the ability to scan and become just about any technological object from a big rig to a dinosaur, download information from the World Wide Web and learn to speak, read, and write every human language with enough understanding to develop human vocal accents suitable to their personality.

The other is a relatively inexpensive, technologically advanced slate computer with about as much processing power as a top of the line desktop of 4 or 5 years ago, which can plug into a keyboard.

Do not despair, my poor little boy. One day, you too will earn a living, and you will be able to afford Apple gear, thus ending this irrational hatred you seem to have for that brand.

You might also, one day, meet a real live woman willing to spend time with you, and then you will have other things to do with your time than to open your computer three times a week to fine-tune it for the latest game. Then you will see... The appeal for Apple... :-)

(Disclaimer: That note should in no way be viewed as a legally binding promise that you will, really, get a paying job or meet a real woman one day. Local laws or general stupidity and/or ugliness still apply.)

Actually those of us that want to play games are pretty much forced to do it on a PC (or pay twice as much for a Crapple and then still install windows). I have more than half a brain and can build a desktop that is 10 times more powerful and useful for gaming for 1/2 the cost of any Crapple product.

You mean you hate a multinational company, and its entire product line, because someone you don't know, who has no connection with said company, commented something you don't like about a subject not even talked about in the article you were reading at the time?

It's simple. You just have to remember that sophisticated robots need an operating system. All Transformers, including the Asus slate and Optimus Prime, run Android. Decepticons run iOS. Hasbro is a front for the evil empire Apple, who wish to destroy the Transformers.

All transformers run Android FSO - Freshly Squeezed Orange, which after many iterations was sold to a unnamed alien organization and implemented in robot technology, to reduce costs and save power - power which in turn can be rerouted to other more vital systems - like weapon technology for example.

Using the previous ill-fated OS of Microsoft - Sliding Doors 88 with integrated metrosexual interface resulted in massive power loss and malfunction...

Another example of stupidity. Hasbro thought they could make a quick buck through a frivolous lawsuit.

Instead, they should've teamed up with Asus, and offered a special edition tablet with the Autobot logo, or something gimicky like that. Tie it's release in with a new movie (ala Bumble Bee Camaro) and you'd have yourself a hit. Both parties would make money, geeks would be happy to shell out some extra coins, and lawyers would be sitting in the corner rocking and wondering where they're going to get their next Porsche payment.

Instead, everyone loses and the lawyers got paid. No wonder this society is going down the tubes.